Abtract
Think of your central heating being on at full blast in every room at home, all of the time, winter or summer. That is the state of current electrical brain stimulation therapy for Parkinson’s disease and Tremor. Patients undergo fixed, continuous, regular high frequency stimulation of key brain targets through an implanted pacemaker irrespective of their clinical state at any given moment. Just as domestic central heating tracks temperature using a thermostat, we should be able to identify the core brain circuit changes underpinning symptoms and continually monitor these to optimally control stimulation. Understanding these circuit changes may also tell us with what pattern to best stimulate for any given symptom complex. We are just beginning to understand the aberrant circuit dynamics in Parkinson’s disease and Tremor sufficiently well to pilot such closed loop and intelligently patterned stimulation regimes. Here I will concentrate on how recordings in patients have led to the development of temporally patterned forms of electrical stimulation for improved therapy in Parkinson’s disease and Tremor.
Biography
Professor Peter Brown joined the University of Oxford as Professor of Experimental Neurology in 2010, having previously been Professor of Neurology and Head of the Sobell Department of Movement Disorders and Motor Neurophysiology, UCL. He leads a group that focuses on the control of normal and abnormal movement, particularly in Parkinson’s Disease.